The invention relates to a suction cannula for dental purposes.
In the dental office, preparations have to be conducted in the mouth region, thus working with high speed instruments. The dental sites that are processed with these instruments must be cooled, to which end the drill or turbine heads are provided with water jets focused on the region to be treated. To properly see the mouth region the dentist requires illumination; to have adequate illumination, the light beam of the treatment lamp is directed into the mouth cavity, whereby it is important that the mouth is opened wide in order to achieve the desired illumination. To improve this illumination, the dentist uses a mouth mirror, with which the progress of the work can be monitored. With this mouth mirror the dentist can also protect either the tongue or the inside of the cheek from injury caused by the working device that is used. As a rule an assistant, who holds a suction cannula at the region to be treated in order to siphon off the sprayed water, assists with this work. With this suction cannula the inside of the cheek or the tongue, which cannot be protected from the mouth mirror of the dentist, is protected in that the suction cannula, which acts simultaneously as a protective umbrella, pushes back that part of the cheek that faces the region to be treated and that part of the tongue that faces the region to be treated and, thus, rules out the risk generated by the working instruments of the dentist.
However, as an assisting helper is not available in all cases the dentist may have to manage without this assistance. As a result, the patient is, first of all, endangered, and secondly the dentist is forced to change instruments, a procedure that requires manipulations that disturb the treatment sequence.
An object of the invention is to improve the existing suction cannulas in such a manner that the aforementioned drawbacks are avoided and the dentist can also treat a patient without assistance and without endangering said patient due to the working instruments and at the same time is released from unnecessary manipulations in order to change instruments. In addition, this improvement shall be simple to use, reliable, and economical to produce.